Tehran – Iran will insist that all sanctions against it are lifted as a condition for a nuclear deal, the foreign minister said on Wednesday, showing no sign of compromise on a major sticking point in its talks with world powers set to resume this week.
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“This is the position that the government has insisted on from the start,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying.
The United Nations, United States and European Union have imposed a wide array of sanctions on Iran to try to curtail its nuclear program as they fear Tehran wants to develop an atomic weapon. Iran insists its aims are peaceful.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on all matters of state in the Islamic Republic, said in a speech last week that the immediate lifting of sanctions must be a part of any nuclear deal.
Western officials have consistently rejected that demand, and a senior European negotiator last week said the immediate lifting of all sanctions was “out of the question”.
Officials from Iran and the P5+1 group of countries – the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China – are due to resume nuclear talks on Thursday aimed at resolving a decade-old standoff over the country’s nuclear program.
Negotiatiors want to agree on a political framework deal by the end of March, three months before the end-June deadline for a comprehensive nuclear pact.
Let’s cut to the chase. Invite Iran to build their nuclear plants next door to the UN and then we can monitor to their peaceful usage.
Maybe we should put sanctions on the countries who supply Iran with the materials they need????
Bibi’s 100% right! The Iranians are agreeing to ZILCH! This is all a stall tactic.
Looks like Obama is being played for a fool again.
I believe this is all staged and pre-arranged by the Americans and Iranians. At the last minute Iran will “cave” on this issue and Obama will be in a position to show how tough he was, as a selling point to the American public and Congress. The larger question is what did the Iranians get in exchange. More centrifuges? Higher enrichment levels? Im not a conspiracy theorist, however, Kerry has been spending many hours at a time in a room alone with Zarif. Clearly, this is not a surprise to him. Also, why the need for this specific detail to be announced to the international press? No other details were announced. Its a set up, and a pretty obvious one.
You can be sure Obama already has caved in to all iran’s demands. Why not? He’s really one of them!